This application contains material relating to medical services and medical information. The provision and handling of some medical services and medical information are regulated, as for example, by the United States Government, the various state governments, and other governmental agencies within the United States and elsewhere. The disclosure herein is made solely in terms of logical and financial possibility and advantage, without regard to possible statutory, regulatory, or other legal considerations. Nothing herein is intended as a statement or representation of any kind that any method or process proposed or discussed herein does or does not comply with any statute, law, regulation, or other legal requirement whatsoever, in any jurisdiction; nor should it be taken or construed as doing so.
Sometimes, keeping track of people and things is a matter of life and death.
Consider severe food allergies, for example. An allergic reaction to food can affect the skin, the gastrointestinal tract, the respiratory tract, and in the most serious cases, the cardiovascular system. Reactions can range from mild to severe, including the potentially life-threatening condition of anaphylaxis. During an anaphylactic event, an individual may have difficulty breathing and experience a drop in blood pressure. Anaphylaxis can result in death if not treated immediately with an epinephrine injection.
And food allergies are not particularly rare. To the contrary, according to the World Allergy Organization, the burden of food allergies is on the rise in both developed and developing countries. Worldwide, 240-550 million people have food allergies, and it is estimated that, in the United States, up to 15 million Americans have food allergies. This affects roughly 1 in every 13 children, which averages to about 2 children in every classroom. Further, food allergies in children increased at an alarming rate of approximately 50% between 1997 and 2011.
As of this writing, children's food allergies cost nearly 25 billion per year. Among children under the age of 18 in the United States, this life threatening medical condition has caused more than 200,000 visits to the emergency room and more than 300,000 ambulatory care visits each year. A food allergy reaction sends someone to the emergency room every 3 minutes.
Notwithstanding the seriousness of the condition and the immense cost, no clear cause of food allergies has been identified, much less a cure for this medical condition. The only known way to prevent anaphylaxis is a total avoidance of foods that contain the allergen, which is an endless, anxious challenge for the allergic individual.
Once an allergen is consumed, leading to anaphylaxis, epinephrine is the only life-saving form of treatment. Thus, individuals with food allergies are advised to carry 2 doses of epinephrine with them at all times, but it is often a burden for them and their families or other caregivers. For example, parents of young children need to make sure there are epinephrine injectors at school and with all daycare providers. Teenagers may not want to carry the injectors with them due to inconvenience, shame, bullying, or simple adolescent rebellion. And people forget things.
Further, epinephrine is worthless in an anaphylactic emergency if it is not administered. A person who may be experiencing signs of an allergic reaction may nonetheless hesitate to administer the epinephrine, maybe out of uncertainty that an anaphylactic reaction has begun or for fear of administering the injection. Individuals with allergies are sometimes not quite sure when they need to administer epinephrine, especially if they have not (to their knowledge) ingested an allergen, and they may hesitate because they do not want to deal with going to the hospital after injecting themselves with epinephrine. Those who do not have allergies may fear to use an epinephrine injector on someone else.
A number of U.S. patents relate to monitoring locations of portable medical devices, including U.S. Pat. No. 6,937,150 issued to Medema, et al., on Aug. 30, 2005, which discusses a remote locating service situated in an emergency response central dispatch. U.S. Patent Application Publication 2014/0155827, assigned to Mylan, Inc., discusses an application server configured to periodically receive location information of a medicament device from a mobile device. U.S. Patent Application Publication 2014/0243749, assigned to Intelliject, Inc., discusses a monitoring device that assists a patient in determining the location of a medicament delivery device and an alarm on the monitoring device to alert users of separation from the medicament delivery device.
Nevertheless, none of these patents and patent applications provides a reliable and integrated system that provides different levels of alerts and reminders for assisting an individual to manage and use his or her medication delivery devices across different day-to-day settings.